Fabiano Caruana took down leader Maxime Vachier-Lagrave as the FIDE Candidates Tournament got off to a spectacular resumption in Yekaterinburg. Maxime had 389 days to prepare to hold with Black in Round 8, but Fabi nevertheless unleashed a brilliant novelty, sacrificing 3 pawns and a piece. MVL defended "like a beast" according to Magnus Carlsen, but was finally ground down in a 6-hour epic. Ian Nepomniachtchi now leads the race to play Magnus alone after a draw against Anish Giri, while Kirill Alekseenko's first win dealt a massive blow to Alexander Grischuk's hopes.

Anatoly Karpov made the first move in what became a chess game for the ages | photo: Lennart Ootes, official website

There were relatively quick draws in Wang Hao-Ding Liren and Nepomniachtchi-Giri, but the remaining two games were epics that stretched into the 7th hour. Replay all the games with computer analysis using the selector below.

We were privileged to have none other than World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen commentating live on the action alongside Tania Sachdev and David Howell. You can rewatch all the commentary below.

Caruana 1-0 MVL: “Pure horror”

This game, with the pre-tournament favourite taking on the current leader, was one we’d spent a year anticipating, and to say it didn’t disappoint would be an understatement. Danish Grandmaster Peter Heine Nielsen had called it “incredibly crucial” for the outcome of the tournament in our video series preview. He’d also, in combination with Jan Gustafsson and Laurent Fressinet, guessed correctly that, despite having over a year to prepare, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave would stay loyal to his beloved Najdorf Sicilian.

It seems it's been a year well-spent by Fabiano Caruana | photo: Lennart Ootes, official website

It wasn’t just the Najdorf, as Maxime also decided to go for the same Poisoned Pawn variation in which he’d lost to both Nils Grandelius and then Caruana in Wijk aan Zee a few months ago. Presenting such a stationary target to Fabiano and his second Rustam Kasimdzhanov is incredibly dangerous, and sure enough they were ready with the opening bomb of the year. 

10.e5 instead of 10.Be2 already varied from the move Fabiano had played in Wijk aan Zee, and was a line Magnus Carlsen recalled preparing with Garry Kasparov when they worked together back in 2009. They were still on a well-trodden path until 16.c3!?, a novelty that saw Maxime sink into an 18-minute think. 

As Magnus Carlsen said of Maxime:

Clearly he believes in what he’s doing, he believes in his repertoire, but it can lead to nasty surprises like the one he’s faced today. I don’t see the immediate point, I guess you don’t either, but you can be sure that this has been approved at very high depth by new AI and hybrid engines, so it’s a precarious position that he finds himself in now. 

The move itself is one of the computer’s top suggestions, so might well have been checked by Maxime, but he said afterwards, “I couldn’t remember the details”. Much worse was to follow! 16…Bc5 17.Bg3 Qd5 ran into the stunning 18.Bc4!!, an incredible blow to get to land in a vital game in a Candidates Tournament.

There was nothing to be done but bite the bullet with 18…Qxc4, when Fabiano blitzed out the follow-up 19.Bd6! Maxime then thought for 28 minutes before playing 19…Nf6!, which his opponent confirmed was a good move: “I was kind of sad that he played this, as I thought Nf6 is a very difficult move to find”.

20.Nxc5 was the next test Fabi blitzed out, and at this stage Magnus was asked what he thought was going through Maxime’s mind.

I think just pure horror! I do think that he deals with it better than I would, for instance, because he’s so used to it, but still, it’s pretty much I feel the worst feeling you have in chess when you just run into something as nasty as this and you just can’t see a simple way out and you know your opponent has prepared everything and is still blitzing. I think just horror sums it up. 

Caruana himself commented:

This was Rustam’s idea, we already had it for quite a while. It still wasn’t clear if it would work out or not. In general I thought my approach should be to put some pressure from the start.

“Obviously it worked!” replied Maxime, but the French no. 1 did everything right in the coming moves, until it was even possible to imagine a repeat of the situation from the first half of the tournament when Fabiano had exploded an opening bomb against Ding Liren but gone on to die in the blast. 

Team Fabi and Rustam are back! | photo: Lennart Ootes, official website 

This time Maxime successfully navigated to an endgame, and might have saved himself immense pain on move 26. It was a position in which Magnus listed some of the strong points of the world no. 2, admitting that there’s an area where Fabiano has the advantage.

Obviously, as you mentioned, his prep is extremely good, his calculation is definitely one of his strong suits as well, as well as just pure concentration, and I would say he’s also a pretty undogmatic player and he’s always adaptable to new circumstances and he often looks at moves that I might reject. I think he sort of has a wider search than I do in a lot of positions, so it means he somehow comes up with ideas that I cannot find. So I would say those are some of his biggest strengths. 

In this position, however, Fabiano said afterwards that saving the rook with 26…Ra7! would have been “just a draw”. In little over the time Magnus took to speak, however, Maxime saved the knight instead with 26…Ne4!?, deciding to play an ending an exchange down. It led to an intense strategic battle which culminated in 43.Rb6+ Rc6.

Fabiano took some time before going for the ending after 44.Rxc6+ Nxc6, and the hesitation was understandable, since the 7-piece tablebases tell us that the arising position was a draw – with perfect play by both sides!

“I really thought this would be an easy draw, and then it got messy,” was how Maxime summed up the ending, and what followed was anything but easy. “Personally I find this much more fun than a sharp Najdorf!” said Magnus, but it must have been a whole lot less fun to play. 

Up to a point Maxime played what Magnus described as “superhuman defence”, finding only move after only move, with the World Champion commenting, “the guy is a beast!” Just afterwards, however, 55…Nh6 was a step off the narrow path to a draw.

Our commentators were surprised as they thought Maxime had found the correct defensive setup with Ng7 (in fact 55…Ne7 was holding as well as 55…Ng7), but if they had any criticism it was only of the fact that Maxime played the move in just 13 seconds.

Just how difficult it was became clear in the moves that followed, since instead of a smooth path to a win the tablebases pointed out Fabi’s 60.Kg4 let the win slip, before 62…Ne7 (62…Nc7!) was the final mistake. The players afterwards pointed to 67…Kf7 as the decisive error, but although 67…Ne7 would have posed far more problems, objectively it also loses. 

In any case, after 68.Kf4! it was clear that Fabi was going to get his king to h5 and finally break through. David Howell explained why Maxime might have held if he’d gone for a fortress with his knight on g7 earlier. 

Six moves later and it was all over, and Caruana had won almost on demand to catch MVL and give himself a real chance to force a World Championship rematch against Magnus.

For full analysis of that epic battle check out French Grandmaster Adrien Demuth’s Game of the Day video below.

And here’s the post-game press conference with the players.

Fabiano described the Candidates as a “surreal tournament”, but the year in between rounds may have worked in his favour.

I guess the end of the tournament will tell who this break benefited. I was kind of thinking maybe it’s a good thing, because last year I wasn’t in good form, I wasn’t playing well, and my hope is that I’ll play better this time around.

Caruana and MVL now find themselves trailing half a point behind Ian Nepomniachtchi, another player who could be grateful that the tournament had stopped, since he noted he was feeling very sick and had lost the last game. 

Nepomniachtchi ½-½ Giri

Ian Nepomniachtchi is now sole leader with six rounds to go | photo: Lennart Ootes, official website

“I had one year to find an advantage for Black after 1.e4 and I have to say I need a little more time!” quipped Anish Giri, but Nepo said that Giri’s choice of the Sveshnikov Sicilian caught him off-guard. Anish dedicated that choice to the watching Magnus Carlsen.

I try to make him happy. To make him learn something, I also played the Sveshnikov. That’s the most I can do today.

Magnus was in fact sceptical of some of the choices Anish made against Nepo’s super-solid setup, but just when it seemed the game might get interesting it fizzled out into a draw by repetition. Ian’s decision to take a draw didn’t get the World Champion’s approval.

The players had their reasons, however, and after long technical explanations they were prompted for a summary by Anastasia Karlovich.

Nepomniachtchi: White achieved nothing out of the opening and it was a quick draw.

Giri: Both sides were rolling the ball, kicking it in the middle of the field from one to the other - nobody took a shot towards the goal. 

The post-game press conference was at least lively, with Anish pointing out it was his first flight in a year but he had a sense of never having left.

The playing hall was exactly the same like last time, so when I came today and sat on the sofa I felt like just one day passed in that year. I sat on that sofa yesterday, Round 7, and today it’s Round 8. In a way it feels like nothing happened in this year.

That brings us to a game in which nothing happened at all.

Wang Hao ½-½ Ding Liren

Chinese stars Ding Liren and Wang Hao were in a relaxed mood after their game | photo: Lennart Ootes, official website

On the surface this game witnessed a very sharp fight in a variation of the Scotch that was once championed by Garry Kasparov, but in fact we just saw a repetition of a spectacular draw that had been played before, for instance in Chigaev-Predke from the 2019 Russian Higher League, Idani-Anton from the Spanish League and Christiansen-Leko from the FIDE Grand Swiss. There was a slight flourish at the end, but it changed nothing. 

Magnus’ point was that simply playing solid chess and then waiting for someone to over-press against him might work out for Wang Hao, and in the clip above you can see that the strategy brought back painful memories for David Howell. All other things being equal, the English grandmaster would be playing in the Candidates himself if he’d beaten Wang Hao in their last-round game on the Isle of Man in 2019. Instead David pushed too hard and lost, while the Chinese star won the tournament.

Wang Hao half-confirmed that strategy when he said his goal in the tournament was not to make mistakes, but he also had another explanation.

I had a problem with jet lag and I couldn’t sleep very well, so I decided to play something easier, just try to test the analysis of my opponent, and if he knows, just make some simple draw.

World no. 3 Ding Liren commented, “my chance to win this tournament is very low, so I feel very relaxed,” though the game did nothing to improve his situation. In fact it left the pre-tournament co-favourite in sole last place after a first win for Kirill Alekseenko.

Alekseenko 1-0 Grischuk     

No-one said it was going to be easy! | photo: Lennart Ootes, official website

In an interview we quoted in our 2020 Candidates preview of Kirill Alekseenko, the now 23-year-old Russian described his style of play as follows.

It seems to me that I try to play as deeply and thoughtfully as possible, always trying to find a way to go for a fight. If there’s an option of going for simplifications or complications I always choose the second. 

That style sounds a lot like that of Alexander Grischuk’s, and in fact Kirill is on record as picking Grischuk as the one player he would like to imitate. In some ways it goes too far, with the deep thought leading to time trouble for both players, but it allowed Kirill to navigate a tricky position out of what was another Poisoned Pawn variation, this time in the French. 

He found a bold centralisation of his king that drew high praise from the World Champion.

Given Kirill had seconds on his clock when he later played 35.Kd4!? you might have thought the young Russian had just blundered, but no.

Grischuk later noted that this was a first chance simply to force a draw with 35…Rxd6+, but he took up the challenge of playing for more with 35…Bb3, when White would be losing – both Rxd6+ and Bxd1 are threatened – if not for 36.Rxg7+ Kxg7 37.Rxd3. Kirill felt this was a position that should be slightly better for him and where he was running no risks. 

Magnus later wondered if Grischuk was deliberately provoking Kirill into playing for a win.

It seems Kirill didn’t need much provoking, while 50…g5!? instead of the drawing Rc7 gave him an opportunity. Grischuk had felt he could push for more, but admitted he underestimated White’s e-pawn and was already in a tricky position with no time when he later blundered the crucial a-pawn and went on to lose.

Afterwards Grischuk got his wish that the interviews after a decisive game are held separately.

Kirill had been able to add winning his first game in a FIDE Candidates Tournament to his other achievements in the past year of finishing university and passing his driving test. The result leaves Grischuk with a mountain to climb to qualify for a match against Magnus.

If Grischuk is going to climb it, then he really needs to beat Ian Nepomniachtchi in their Round 9 match-up. We also have the two winners from Monday meeting in Alekseenko-Caruana.

Don’t miss all the Round 9 action, with Magnus Carlsen back to commentate alongside Tania Sachdev and David Howell, from 13:00 CEST exclusively here on chess24.

See also:

• Official website
• FIDE Candidates Tournament games on chess24
• FIDE Candidates Tournament stopped at halfway
• FIDE Candidates to resume after 389 days
• Carlsen to play 5th World Championship in Dubai this November
  
• Magnus Carlsen to commentate on the Candidates
• Jan, Laurent & Peter preview the Candidates
• Alexander Grischuk on the FIDE Candidates